Mix-and-match offense has many faces

Growing balance, versatility should be nightmare to defend

Credit: Herald (file)

THEIR CALL: Bill Belichick, right, and Josh McDaniels now have enough moves on their offensive dance card to make defensive coordinators’ heads spin. (File)

FOXBORO — After watching how Bill Belichick and Josh McDaniels manipulated and maneuvered the Patriots offense against the Bills last weekend, it’s going to be interesting to see what they might have up their sleeve today against the Denver Broncos defense.

What buttons will they push? Will they draw up more tight end-heavy sets or more multiple-receiver looks for Tom Brady’s handiwork? Or will it be more run-oriented as ir was last week against the Bills?

After years of falling in the category of a spread-the-field, pass-happy offense, with few variations, the coaching staff now has offensive versatility to do most anything. It’s the same kind of flexibility Belichick had with his defense during the team’s championship runs.

Belichick would drive offensive coordinators batty every week because he ran so many variations out of so many different alignments and formations.

Now, he and McDaniels can dial up similar forms of torture for defensive coordinators. After showing off a potent running game against the Bills, that made Brady even more dangerous. Balance is a beautiful thing for an offense.

Did anyone catch the look on Dave Wannstedt’s face in the second half of the Bills game as the Pats were in the process of ripping off six straight touchdowns? The Bills defensive coordinator was a bit dumbfounded, to say the least, as the Pats bombarded his defense via ground attack and air assault.

All of which brings us to today’s showdown with Peyton Manning and the Broncos. With Manning on the opposite side, the Patriots know they’re going to have to score points. That’s a given. How they go about moving the football, how they test and torment Jack Del Rio, who took over the reins as the Broncos defensive coordinator, should be fun to watch.

Last season, Brady crushed many of the same cast of characters still operating in this Broncos defense. In the AFC divisional playoff, Denver had no answer, as Brady was 26-for-34 for 363 yards with six touchdown passes. Three of those went to tight end Rob Gronkowski, who simply could not be covered.

Del Rio, however, has changed things up a bit, and sprinkled in some new players he hopes will make a difference.

The Broncos do have a very good pass rush up front with Elvis Dumervil and Von Miller, who were contained pretty well last season by the Pats offensive line. While Del Rio has had the Broncos playing a Tampa-2 zone, he offered a new wrinkle after both the Falcons’ Matt Ryan and the Texans’ Matt Schaub torched his secondary in back-to-back weeks. He went with seven defensive backs (three corners, four safeties) last week against Oakland’s Carson Palmer and it paid off.

The Bills also loaded up their secondary, but got burned because their pass rush didn’t get to Brady, and the Patriots ran the ball forcefully, with Stevan Ridley and Brandon Bolden tag-teaming the Bills for 243 yards.

When asked about having a balanced offense, and the flexibility it affords in driving a defense nuts, Belichick got a bit giddy last week.

“I think it’s a great way to play because it just forces the defense to have to react and cover everything,” he said. “Defensively, I think that’s where you want them — you want them to have to think about all their responsibilities, outside runs, inside runs, deep passes, short passes, screen passes, misdirection plays, point-of-attack plays, inside routes, outside routes, inside receivers, outside receivers, I mean, just to have good balance kind of keeps them from ganging up on one thing. If you can do that, then it opens up a lot of other things.”

Belichick pointed to how the success of the running game last week worked to set up play-action passes. That was clearly in evidence with Gronkowski being wide open for a fourth-quarter touchdown after the Bills bought Brady’s play-fake to Bolden.

“A big part of that play was the play-action and the run threat that we had presented in the game that caused the (Bills) linebackers to displace a little bit, and we were able to get behind them,” Belichick said of the Gronkowski touchdown. “The running game helps the passing game; the passing game helps the running game. Throwing it to the receivers helps the tight ends, throwing to the tight ends helps the receivers, throwing to the receivers helps the backs. It just all creates spacing and forces the defense to handle the whole field.

“I think that just gives the offense good opportunities. I think it’s a good way to be able to attack offensively. It’s not always where you are, sometimes the defense will be intent on taking a certain aspect of your game away and say, ‘OK, we’re not going to give you this. We’re going to make you beat us with that.’ Sometimes you have to be able to do that.”

It’s interesting now to think back to the Belichick NFL Films “Football Life” documentary, where he laments after getting pummelled by New Orleans that if a team took away Randy Moss and Wes Welker, it was essentially game over. The Patriots were dead offensively.

The Broncos may take away a few things today, but there’s plenty more. And, that’s not even taking into account Aaron Hernandez, who has been sidelined with a bad ankle, but was on the practice field Thursday and appears to be getting closer to a return.

“I think maintaining your balance offensively is always important and forcing the defense to try to defend multiple things that you could possibly do and defend all of your skill players that could potentially touch the ball on each series,” McDaniels said. “Even in the Arizona and Baltimore games, I think we did a decent job of continuing to run the football because I think that certainly has shown to be a way that we can move the ball effectively.”

So if Del Rio employs all those defensive backs, they’ll run. And even if he doesn’t, they’ll run to set up all of their different pass options, as they move farther away from being one-dimensional and being one gigantic headache to defensive coordinators.